1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for presenting the total result of the usage performance of itself, a control method for the image forming apparatus, a printing system, and a non-transitory computer-readable medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the number of printed sheets increases, the cost of consumed sheets and toners rises. A business owner who introduces an image forming apparatus or the administrator of an image forming apparatus wants to reduce the use amount of sheets or toners to cut the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
In recent years, there has been known a technique of providing, for each user, on a local panel, the tally window of the number of output sheets for each setting (color/two-color/monochrome, single-sided/double-sided, double-sided page ratio/two-color page ratio/N-in-1 page ratio, or the like) or each user/group. The administrator can set a window display frequency (display in each login operation/display once per day). If the user can identify the use state such as the number of output sheets of the image forming apparatus, he/she can execute printing with printing suppression in mind by, for example, refraining from unnecessary printing or color printing, or often using double-sided printing or N-in-1 printing.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-266892, a checkbox for setting whether to send a notification before a use upper limit value is exceeded, and a percentage input field for setting a percentage of the upper limit value above which a notification is sent are prepared, and are arbitrarily settable. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-170556 discloses a technique of displaying data at a plurality of timings based on the ratio of a usage performance to the use upper limit value of the user or the ratio of the upper limit value to the usage performance of the image forming apparatus.
However, on a tally window displayed on the local panel of the image forming apparatus, the same items are displayed to all users at the same frequency since the administrator makes settings at once. If a total result window is periodically displayed, the user may skip over the tally window without considering the reason why the window is displayed. Furthermore, since a similar window is displayed regardless of settings, the user cannot recognize specific portions to pay attention in the tally window, and thus may not be reminded of printing suppression even though the tally window is displayed.
Therefore, an arrangement which allows the user to readily identify the reason why a window is displayed is required.